Hearing deficiencies can range from partial to complete hearing loss. Often, an individual's hearing ability varies across the range of audible sound frequencies, and many individuals have hearing impairment with respect to only select acoustic frequencies. For example, an individual's hearing loss may be greater at higher frequencies than at lower frequencies, or vice versa.
Hearing aids have been developed to alleviate the effects of hearing losses in individuals. Conventionally, hearing aids range from ear pieces configured to amplify sounds to configurable hearing devices offering adjustable operational parameters that can be configured by a hearing specialist to enhance the performance of the hearing aid. Parameters, such as volume or tone, often can be easily adjusted, and many hearing aids allow for the individual users to adjust these parameters. In such instances, the hearing aid adjustment is often applied to both hearing aids. For example, an adjustment in tone or volume is applied substantially equally to both hearing aids.
In instances where the individual's hearing loss varies across frequencies, such hearing aids can be tuned by an audiologist, for example, to compensate for the unique variations of the individual's hearing loss.
Typically, a hearing health professional takes measurements using calibrated and specialized equipment to assess an individual's hearing capabilities in a variety of sound environments, and then adjusts the hearing aid parameters based on the calibrated measurements. Subsequent adjustments to the hearing aid can require a second exam and further calibration by the hearing health professional, which can be costly and time intensive.
To account for various acoustic environments, in some instances, the hearing health professional may create multiple hearing profiles for the user for use in different sound environments. Such hearing profiles include frequency and amplitude adjustments that can be applied to sound-related signals to compensate for a particular user's hearing deficiencies and to filter frequencies or reduce the volume in certain acoustic environments. Unfortunately, such hearing profiles may not take into account the variety of acoustic environments to which the user may be exposed. In some instances, it is possible that none of the various stored hearing profiles accurately reflects the user's acoustic environment. Moreover, even if an appropriate profile is available, the user may not know that a hearing profile is available that better fits the particular acoustic environment or the user may make a less than ideal selection by choosing a non-optimal hearing aid profile for the acoustic environment.
Higher end (higher cost) hearing aid models sometimes include logic configured to select between the stored profiles. Since robust processors consume significant battery power, hearing aid manufacturers often choose lower-end and lower-cost processors, which consume less power but which also have less processing power. Thus, the hearing aid may have insufficient processing power to characterize the acoustic environment effectively in order to make an appropriate selection.
To make hearing aid profile selections, instruction sets executed by such processors may rely on a variety of assumptions that can lead to less than desirable hearing aid profile selections. For example, the instructions may cause the processor to adjust the hearing aid profile periodically, reducing power consumption by making adjustments infrequently. Since the acoustic environment of the user can change rapidly, an assumption that periodic profile adjustments are suitable for most hearing aid users, made in the interest of power conservation, can result in a subpar hearing experience in a variety of acoustic environments.